The Fresh & Easy grocery chain has to fix what it calls a nonexistent problem, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill banning the sale of alcoholic beverages at self-service checkout stands. Brown, just before midnight Sunday, approved a proposal that forces the British-owned chain, with more than 125 stores in California, to shift from an all-automated format to one that has at least one clerk on hand to check a purchaser's age before ringing up sales of beer and wine. The bill was one of 466 signed by the governor since the Legislature recessed for the year Sept.

Residents of other states who work for California companies are protected by the state's overtime laws during business trips here, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Thursday. Employment lawyers predicted that the ruling would reduce business travel to the state and trigger hundreds of lawsuits against California companies in the coming days. Firms now typically pay employees in accordance with the labor laws of the states in which they live. The court said the ruling would protect Californians from being replaced by less-expensive temporary workers from out of state.

Her story had been lost amid dusty records that were long ago stashed in deep storage and forgotten. Forgotten until a retired federal agent, researching the history of Chicago law enforcement, stumbled upon a mention that, in the 1890s, she had become a police officer in Chicago. The date caught his attention. A female police officer in the 1890s? Now, after three years of research, Rick Barrett, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and an amateur historian, says he has found definitive evidence that Marie Owens was not only the first policewoman in Chicago, but also the first known female officer in the United States.

Summer is the peak season for educational internships of all kinds — paid and unpaid. For small businesses, the unpaid ones are gaining in popularity. Designer Raven Kauffman, owner of Raven Kauffman Couture in downtown Los Angeles, is seeking an unpaid intern, her first time offering a formal summer internship since launching the high-end handbag business almost three years ago. "I believe in offering internships because I was an intern," said Kauffman, who updated Rolodexes, made coffee and learned the business as an intern in the mid-1990s.

Even by reality television standards, the showdown in the Season 1 finale of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" was epic: A furious Teresa Giudice screamed at fellow cast member Danielle Staub that she was a "prostitution whore," then yanked a table into the air, sending dishes crashing to the ground. Watching the drama were Staub's noticeably alarmed daughters, then 11 and 15, whose mother had kept them in the room for the exchange. New Jersey prohibits minors from appearing in entertainment productions dangerous to their "life, limb, health or morals."

When I was a college student, a summer internship at a big-city newspaper seemed just the thing to boost my nascent journalism career. But instead, I spent the summers as a big-city doorman, filling in for the regulars while they were on vacation. The reason was simple: Being a doorman paid a lot more, and I needed the money for tuition. A generation later, for a student in my shoes, the situation is quite a bit worse. Nowadays many internships don't pay anything at all, yet landing an internship has come to seem almost essential.

When you think of Babe Ruth, you might picture a newsreel shot of him bashing a home run in Yankee Stadium and then trotting around the bases on those surprisingly skinny legs of his. But one Southern California city also "had a part" in the Babe's colorful career, author Tim Grobaty points out. Long Beach arrested the Sultan of Swat on Jan. 22, 1927 -- for the crime of autographing baseballs for kids. There was more to it than that, of course. But not much more. As Grobaty tells the story in his book "Long Beach Almanac," Ruth was in town to perform three shows at the old State Theater near the Pike amusement park.

The Superior Grocers supermarket chain was assessed $79,200 in fines Tuesday for allowing 16- and 17-year-old employees to operate heavy machinery in violation of child labor laws. U.S. Labor Department investigators found 40 workplace violations for the workers operating scrap-paper balers, paper box compactors, power-driven hoists and forklifts, said Deanne Amaden, a spokeswoman for the agency. "It's not just that their employees were 16 and 17, it was that these younger workers were using machinery -- heavy machinery," she said.